If you're in the mood to bake a scratch strawberry cake, here’s a recipe flavored with 2 cups of strawberry puree and a dash of strawberry extract. It's a nice change from the popular strawberry cakes with white cake mix and strawberry gelatin. It doesn't have that same hot pink color, but the flavor makes up for it.
Scratch Strawberry Cake Flavor
As far as flavor is concerned, it's full-on strawberry with notes of vanilla. Also, the texture is dense and soft rather than fluffy. We liked this scratch cake a lot, but the truth is I haven’t made one of the cake mix variations in a while and want to do a comparisons of the two types together. I’ll post a cake mix version (though you probably already have one), but for now here's the scratch. It’s adapted from one I found on Fancy Flours, where I've purchased cute sprinkles and cupcake wrappers. My changes were to use a completely different icing, make the cake in two layers and add vanilla.
Update
You can find the original recipe using the link to Fancy Flours. Since posting this, I've noticed some other bloggers have made the cake with modifications including reducing the strawberry puree in a saucepan and using ground freeze dried strawberries in the icing. These are excellent ideas and their cakes have great reviews. For that reason, I recommend using those recipes until I have a chance to make this one a few more times. I just haven't had a lot of time to test this one multiple times because I usually end up making the hot pink ones with the strawberry gelatin. That, plus I rarely have the strawberry extract on hand.
Strawberry Cake Update Two
Since posting this I've tried a couple of frostings made with ground freeze dried strawberries. I wanted to love them, but the strawberry flavor was kind of sour and didn't have the punch I was looking for. Plus it felt heavy and weird and seems more appropriate in small amounts or on cupcakes than over a whole cake. Personally, I'd rather have a light and fluffy topping on strawberry cake. The cream cheese strawberry frosting I linked to on Fancy Flours is still better (in my opinion).
For a fresh strawberry cake, I think I'd rather just make a good Strawberry Bread. For pink and pretty strawberry cake, I'd still go with one of the white cake mix/gelatin versions.
T. Martin
Having spent a lot of time pouring over cake mixed based recipes I can say
this type of cake is one where the outcome is MUCH better when baked from scratch.
Sometimes there is just no shortcut to a good end result.
Donna @ What the Dog Ate
Hi Anna,
Mine wasn't very pink but it tasted like actual strawberries, which isn't always easy to accomplish when all that butter is involved. 🙂
Mela
Wish I had all the ingredients so I can bake this cake. We like anything with strawberries. Thanks, Anna for using my strawberry frosting again. It's really good when chilled.
Anna
This is a good cake for anyone who wants something with more of a natural color. As much as I enjoyed the flavor, I think I like strawberry cakes that are hot pink!
Donna, yours looks good. Was it very pink?
I may have to compromise again and look for scratch cakes that have gelatin in them. This one's next on the list.
http://allrecipes.com/recipe/strawberry-cake-from-scratch/detail.aspx?src=VD_Summary
Donna @ What the Dog Ate
Yummy! I made something similar using the puree the. The strawberry puree juice is used in the cake and the puree solids are used in the frosting.
http://whatthedogate.blogspot.com/2014/02/strawberry-dream-cake.html
KAnn
Looks beautiful...I was searching for a fresh strawberry cake several years ago per special request and I struggled to find one that did not use gelatin...I found this one (used my own cream cheese frosting) and it was very good.
http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Jesse-and-Steves-Fresh-Strawberry-Cake/Detail.aspx?event8=1&prop24=SR_Title&e11=strawberry%20cake&e8=Quick%20Search&event10=1&e7=Home%20Page&soid=sr_results_p2i19
Karen Schmidt-Dill
In the midst of a "ground blizzard" today and severely cold, this looks so summery and I am drooling! Beautiful picture too. I love the dense moist scratch baked cakes so much better than the boxed cake mix kinds.